Читать книгу Huberta's Journey - Cicely van Straten - Страница 6

Two

High on a hilltop nearby, the lonely calf was wandering restlessly. Now and then she paused and uttered a gruff “hom-hom-hom”, calling to her bull group, swiv elling her ears to listen for their answering calls.

All night she wandered, calling. As she grazed, she lifted her muzzle to scent the air, still hoping to catch their familiar scent or hear their distant rumbling voices on the wind.

As the first birds trilled at dawn, she sought shelter in a small patch of forest in a valley.

Her belly was heavy with fodder. She pushed deep under a thicket of bushes, flopped down and fell asleep. While she slept her legs twitched, her ears flicked. In her mind rose images of the river where she had been born.

The memories that haunted her sleep were of a sand bank in a wide brown river. A herd of hippo cows and their young lay basking in the early-morning sun. They had grazed in the hills all night and now they slept with heads on one another’s necks, their calves beside them.

Ox peckers hopped along their grey backs, nipping ticks from behind ears and in neck folds, but the cows slumbered on. In the river around the sand bank, the bulls of the herd floated, alert for signs of crocodile.

When the sun grew fierce at midday, the cows rose and lumbered into the cool water, calling their calves with the “hom-hom-hom”’ that sounds like laughter. Calves ducked under them to suckle, or butted heads as they swam.

As the sun sank and the fig trees cast shadows over the bank, the cows and calves emerged from the water to lie once more on the warm sand. When dusk fell the bulls called and led them up into the hills to graze.

All night they clipped the lush grasses with their horny lips while the bulls guarded them, ever watchful for signs of leopard or python. Their booming voices, deep as a lion’s, kept predators at bay and signalled that all was well.

When dawn flushed the sky, the bulls led their groups back to the river. The bull, Mzamuli2 stopped by the reed beds and discharged dung with rapid swishes of his tail to mark his territory, while his cows and calves swam across to the nursery on the sand bank.

But one morning Novikela3, Mzamuli’s oldest cow, did not follow the others. She trotted away, restless with sudden pain in her belly. She lay down in the shallow water near the reeds and twisted her great body in the mud. Then she rose and plunged into the reeds, circling and trampling them into a flat bed.

At last she gave a low moan and barged into a deep pool. Her round flanks heaved and she uttered a long, sighing snort. From under her tail a tiny calf slipped into the water. Its short legs paddled desperately as it tore loose from the cord that bound it to Novikela.

She turned swiftly and with her great muzzle she lifted the calf out of the water while it took its first breaths and gave a faint bleat. Novikela answered it with deep grunts until it lay quiet and opened its eyes.

The cow and her new-born calf hung in the water for a long while. Novikela’s ears swivelled and her nostrils dilated, taking in all sounds and scents. She was alert for any sign of predators, ready to attack anything that threatened her calf.

When the soft dripping notes of Kombazana the wood dove told her that all was still on shore, Novikela swam into the shallow water and lowered her calf. She nudged it gently as it took its first steps and led it to the bed of flattened reeds. Here she stood over it and gomphed softly, nosing it from head to tail as it stumbled between her legs.

The calf sniffed and nuzzled her great brown underbelly, then found the teats in her loins. Nudging upwards, it suckled while creamy first milk seeped from the corners of its mouth. The cow, eyes half closed in pleasure, answered it with a sigh.

Soon the little calf sank down and fell asleep.

As the sun climbed, the cow kept watch. Later, when cicadas shrilled in the hard sunlight, her sensitive skin prickled in the heat. Novikela nudged the calf awake and led it back to the water. Keeping her little one always at her left shoulder, she steered carefully downstream into a secluded bay.

It was a quiet place shaded by an umbrella thorn. In this secret backwater she would guard her calf. Here they were safe, withdrawn from the herd and the quick-tempered bulls.